Proper response to 不好意思

Question

If someone make a mistake and say this:

不好意思，非常不好意思！

What is the proper response? Should 没事 or 没关系 be used to reply?

Answer 1

没事 and 没关系 are good responses to 不好意思. You can also use 不要紧 and 没什么.

On 搜狐问答 they say that in normal circumstances the difference between these words is really small, but there can be a difference in meaning:

没事 is rather used when there are no losses and no harm. 不要紧 is rather used when the losses or harm is small and 没关系 when the losses and harm is big, but you don't want to blame and the other person doesn't need to take responsibility.

On Nciku they say that 不要紧, 没关系, 没什么 and 没事儿 all mean "to be of no importance". They can also be used as a response to another person's apology. Furthermore 没事儿 can mean "nothing serious". If 不要紧 is used in a subordinate clause, there is harm involved and the harm is mentioned in the main clause. On Nciku you can find some examples.

Answer 2

Both 没事 and 没关系 are good responses. In Beijing, people always say 没事儿. 没事 and 没事儿 are used between close friends.

Answer 3

Perhaps, you might want to use 没事啦真的没事, since the person is so insistent on saying sorry. :)

不好意思，非常不好意思！

Here the person seems to be sincerely apologetic about some possibly grave mistake he has committed. If it were something minor, the person would have stopped at simply 不好意思. 没事 in this scenario implies "It's nothing", so to emphasize and reassure the person, you continue by saying "没事啦真的没事" (it's nothing; it's really nothing).

Substitutes that the others have offered (like 没关系、不要紧 and 不用紧) all work perfectly well--it's just up to your own preference. And the added reassurance is my personal opinion; you can do perfectly well without it.

Of course, you can go ahead and say 都怪你的错 and make the person feel even more guilty instead. :P